The Mill on the Floss
double urgency of the events and inward impulses brought by the last
week.
Philip had not spoken to her himself about the removal of obstacles
between them on his father’s side,—he shrank from that; but he had told
everything to Lucy, with the hope that Maggie, being informed through
her, might give him some encouraging sign that their being brought thus
much nearer to each other was a happiness to her. The rush of
conflicting feelings was too great for Maggie to say much when Lucy,
with a face breathing playful joy, like one of Correggio’s cherubs,
poured forth her triumphant revelation; and Lucy could hardly be
surprised that she could do little more than cry with gladness at the
thought of her father’s wish being fulfilled, and of Tom’s getting the
Mill again in reward for all his hard striving. The details of
preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lucy’s attention for
the next few days, and nothing had been said by the cousins on subjects
that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Philip had been to the house
more than once, but Maggie had had no private conversation with him,
and thus she had been left to fight her inward battle without
interference.
But when the bazaar was fairly ended, and the cousins were alone again,
resting together at home, Lucy said,—
“You must give up going to stay with your aunt Moss the day after
to-morrow, Maggie; write a note to her, and tell her you have put it
off at my request, and I’ll send the man with it. She won’t be
displeased; you’ll have plenty of time to go by-and-by; and I don’t
want you to go out of the way just now.”
“Yes, indeed I must go, dear; I can’t put it off. I wouldn’t leave aunt
Gritty out for the world. And I shall have very little time, for I’m
going away to a new situation on the 25th of June.”
“Maggie!” said Lucy, almost white with astonishment.
“I didn’t tell you, dear,” said Maggie, making a great effort to
command herself, “because you’ve been so busy. But some time ago I
wrote to our old governess, Miss Firniss, to ask her to let me know if
she met with any situation that I could fill, and the other day I had a
letter from her telling me that I could take three orphan pupils of
hers to the coast during the holidays, and then make trial of a
situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept the offer.”
Lucy felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable to speak.
“Maggie,” she said at last, “how could you be so unkind to me—not to
tell me—to take _such_ a step—and now!” She hesitated a little, and
then added, “And Philip? I thought everything was going to be so happy.
Oh, Maggie, what is the reason? Give it up; let me write. There is
nothing now to keep you and Philip apart.”
“Yes,” said Maggie, faintly. “There is Tom’s feeling. He said I must
give him up if I married Philip. And I know he will not change—at least
not for a long while—unless something happened to soften him.”
“But I will talk to him; he’s coming back this week. And this good news
about the Mill will soften him. And I’ll talk to him about Philip.
Tom’s always very compliant to me; I don’t think he’s so obstinate.”
“But I must go,” said Maggie, in a distressed voice. “I must leave some
time to pack. Don’t press me to stay, dear Lucy.”
Lucy was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating.
At length she knelt down by her cousin, and looking up in her face with
anxious seriousness, said,—
“Maggie, is it that you don’t love Philip well enough to marry him?
Tell me—trust me.”
Maggie held Lucy’s hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own
hands were quite cold. But when she spoke, her voice was quite clear
and distinct.
“Yes, Lucy, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best
and highest lot for me,—to make his life happy. He loved me first. No
one else could be quite what he is to me. But I can’t divide myself
from my brother for life. I must go away, and wait. Pray don’t speak to
me again about it.”
Lucy obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was,—
“Well, dear Maggie, at least you will go to the dance at Park House
to-morrow, and have some music and brightness, before you go to pay
these dull dutiful visits. Ah! here come aunty and the tea.”
Chapter X.
The Spell Seems Broken
The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly
brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of sixteen
couples, with attendant parents and guardians. The focus of brilliancy
was the long drawing-room, where the dancing went forward, under the
inspiration of the grand piano; the library, into which it opened at
one end, had the more sober illumination of maturity, with caps and
cards; and at the other end the pretty sitting-room, with a
conservatory attached, was left as an occasional cool retreat. Lucy,
who had laid aside her black for the first time, and had her pretty
slimness set off by an abundant dress of white crape, was the
acknowledged queen of the occasion; for this was one of the Miss
Guests’ thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any
aristocracy higher than that of St Ogg’s, and stretching to the extreme
limits of commercial and professional gentility.
Maggie at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all the
figures—it was so many years since she had danced at school; and she
was glad to have that excuse, for it is ill dancing with a heavy heart.
But at length the music wrought in her young limbs, and the longing
came; even though it was the horrible young Torry, who walked up a
second time to try and persuade her. She warned him that she could not
dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of course, was willing to
wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be complimentary when he
assured her at several intervals that it was a “great bore” that she
couldn’t waltz, he would have liked so much to waltz with her. But at
last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned dance which has the
least of vanity and the most of merriment in it, and Maggie quite
forgot her troublous life in a childlike enjoyment of that half-rustic
rhythm which seems to banish pretentious etiquette. She felt quite
charitably toward young Torry, as his hand bore her along and held her
up in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that fire of young joy in them
which will flame out if it can find the least breath to fan it; and her
simple black dress, with its bit of black lace, seemed like the dim
setting of a jewel.
Stephen had not yet asked her to dance; had not yet paid her more than
a passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which
perpetually made part of his consciousness, had been half screened by
the image of Philip Wakem, which came across it like a blot; there was
some attachment between her and Philip; at least there was an
attachment on his side, which made her feel in some bondage. Here,
then, Stephen told himself, was another claim of honour which called on
him to resist the attraction that was continually threatening to
overpower him. He told himself so; and yet he had once or twice felt a
certain savage resistance, and at another moment a shuddering
repugnance, to this intrusion of Philip’s image, which almost made it a
new incitement to rush toward Maggie and claim her for himself.
Nevertheless, he had done what he meant to do this evening,—he had kept
aloof from her; he had hardly looked at her; and he had been gayly
assiduous to Lucy. But now his eyes were devouring Maggie; he felt
inclined to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his place. Then
he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his partner. The
possibility that he too should dance with Maggie, and have her hand in
his so long, was beginning to possess him like a thirst. But even now
their hands were meeting in the dance,—were meeting still to the very
end of it, though they were far off each other.
Stephen hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got
through the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free and
saw Maggie seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He made
his way toward her round the couples that were forming for the waltz;
and when Maggie became conscious that she was the person he sought, she
felt, in spite of all the thoughts that had gone before, a glowing
gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened with her
childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to joy and
tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter,—she was ready
to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment seemed a keen,
vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain. This one, this
last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the
present, without those chill, eating thoughts of the past and the
future.
“They’re going to waltz again,” said Stephen, bending to speak to her,
with that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams
create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill
the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them
into a room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard flirtation.
“They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on, and
the room is very warm; shall we walk about a little?”
He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into
the sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the
accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no
visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the
conservatory.
“How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights
among them!” said Maggie, in a low voice. “They look as if they
belonged to an enchanted land, and would never fade away; I could fancy
they were all made of jewels.”
She was looking at the tier of geraniums as she spoke, and Stephen made
no answer; but he was looking at her; and does not a supreme poet blend
light and sound into one, calling darkness mute, and light eloquent?
Something strangely powerful there was in the light of Stephen’s long
gaze, for it made Maggie’s face turn toward it and look upward at it,
slowly, like a flower at the ascending brightness. And they walked
unsteadily on, without feeling that they were walking; without feeling
anything but that long, grave, mutual gaze which has the solemnity
belonging to all deep human passion. The hovering thought that they
must and would renounce each other made this moment of mute confession
more intense in its rapture.
But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and were obliged to
pause and turn. The change of movement brought a new consciousness to
Maggie; she blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm from
Stephen’s, going up to some flowers to smell them. Stephen stood
motionless, and still pale.
“Oh, may I get this rose?” said Maggie, making a great effort to say
something, and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable confession.
“I think I am quite wicked with roses; I like to gather them and smell
them till they have no scent left.”
Stephen was mute; he was incapable of putting a sentence together, and
Maggie bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose
that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman’s arm?
The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled
elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to the delicate
wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm
softness. A woman’s arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two
thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the Parthenon
which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the timeworn marble of a
headless trunk. Maggie’s was such an arm as that, and it had the warm